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24 hours in NYC

My name is Felipe but most of you know me as The Lost Coast. I am a photographer hailing from Sacramento and I am stoked to share with you my first post on “In The Clouds”.

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New York City is a photography mecca, so visiting here was quite a big deal for me. They say NYC is the city that never sleeps, so I decided, why should I? I stayed up for 24 hours straight and shot photos all around the city. These are my favorite shots I took from the 24 straight hours of shooting. Enjoy!

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Majority of the time in NYC, I was looking up. There were so many older buildings with cool architecture. I kept wondering how I was the only weirdo looking up at the architecture, but as you can see it was awesome.

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Of course I visited the famous spots, the Flatiron building and the Brooklyn Bridge. If you know me, you know I have a real obsession with bridges and I was in bridge heaven! There were SO many bridges going back and forth from all different sides of the city. I felt like a kid at an all you can eat ice cream place. People ask me, ‘why bridges?’ My answer is simple. Its a purposeful form of art. Bridges are architecture, they serve a purpose, they connect people and places, they simply are a peace of art that makes life easy and THAT is why I love bridges.

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We took the Brooklyn bridge to DUMBO, which I later found out means: Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass. From there, I got an awesome shot of the Manhattan Bridge from the street. There were so many people there, so me and Aaron @floodthesensor, patiently waited until the street were as empty as possible and started shooting.

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This boat shot is definitely one of my favorite shots from the trip, and a “In The Clouds” blog exclusive. I love the taxi look, the fog covering the Freedom Tower, the guy in the red shirt staring out of the boat (take a look, you’ll see it!), how gray the city looks compared to the yellow of the boat, and how it got cut off right after it says “New York” on the boat.

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Did I mention I was looking up a lot? I feel like a lot of people miss out on the beauty of the world because they are constantly on the go and forget to pay attention to their environment. This is where I excel, I slow everything down and focus on whats around me, what messages the environment is sending me.

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Finally, we went back to the Flatiron Building. Aaron wanted to do a shot using an umbrella and it was raining so it was perfect. These are 2 shots at 2 different exposures. The first shot is a 5 second exposure and the second is an 1/8th of a second. You can see how the taxis look different. I love playing around with different shutter speeds. You should try, if you’re into that.

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It started raining harder, so I just sat in a corner and started panning. Panning is hands down the hardest type of photography. Hands down. Here is a good one I caught. As you can see everything is blurred, except the top of the taxi where I aimed. As you see the close up – you can clearly read the sign, thats what you want to aim for.

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Shortly after, it started raining pretty hard and we chilled at a pizza joint for a while, charged the phones, and ate… then we met up with a long time IG friend @illwill173 (pictured)

Will took us around all night, we hit the streets and rooftops in the projects of NYC… I’ll let the pictures do the talking now.

By sunrise the next morning, we had walked 29 miles straight. Will left, my other friend fell asleep on the side of the bridge, but Aaron and I just kept shooting. I love the reflection of the Manhattan bridge in this shot.

The last shot was my favorite though. Sunrise on an empty Brooklyn bridge. The clouds were pink, it was awesome. Anyway, thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far. Stay tuned for the helicopter shots.

About The Lost Coast

Felipe hails from Downtown Sacramento. He is an elementary school teacher by day and a photographer at night. He spends his weekends in Sacramento with his son, or somewhere in the deserts, forests, or mountains of California.